What is The Needle?

The changing meanings of The Needle are the inspiration for these pages. Above Alexanderplatz is Berlin's television tower. The Needle surveilled the city during East German times like a threatening eye; then its meaning changed after the Berlin Wall fell. Berliners now think of the tower as a giant disco ball flirting with the city lights––a symbol of sex, electronic music and youth culture. This weekly documents the Berlin Renaissance today, mindful of a dramatic and terrifying history. Berlin is Europe's most exciting city, and The Needle is here to share.

About the Author

Joseph Pearson is a writer based in Berlin. Born in Canada, he was educated at Cambridge University, UK, where he received his doctorate in history in 2001. He is currently writing a non-fiction portrait of Berlin for a London-based publisher (forthcoming 2016). He is also the essayist and blogger of the Schaubühne Theatre, one of Berlin's best known state-funded institutions. Since 2008, he has written The Needle, which has become one of Berlin's most popular blogs. His writing has appeared widely in the press, literary and academic journals, and has been translated into German, Italian, French, and Arabic. Having taught at Columbia University in New York City, he now lectures at New York University Berlin (since 2012). For professional inquiries please contact: needleberlin [AT] gmail.com OR joseph [AT] cantab.net.

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Caspar David Friedrich Light

Photo: JS Helgeson (with thanks)

It is the time of year in Berlin when the days get longer but summer has not quite arrived. Something happens to the atmosphere above the city at dusk: a collision of temperatures, the earth still cold, the air warming. The sky is full of clouds.

With sundown, the evening light ropes all in thick profundity, and then, after the short night, there is yet another change.

Detail from Meeresküste bei Mondschein / Seashore by Moonlight. Work is public domain and from Wiki Commons.

The light grows thinner in the early morning. Why does this atmosphere make every surface look more lucid? It’s as if there is less oxygen. But if we are starved of it, why do we see sharper? The sky is voided of mist and cloud. It hangs close to the ground instead, if at all. The ethereal clarity awaits the growing clouds.

Photo: JS Pearson

But it is the late night views, through cloud, that strike me most these days, especially as the moon grows full this week. This is when you look into the sky and understand the German Romantics. It’s Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) light, something you recognise from those paintings hanging up high in the Alte Nationalgalerie.

City at Moonrise; Public Domain (from Wiki Commons)

The moon passes behind the clouds, sending out arms of darkness. There should be a barren rock, a stunted tree, a sweep of landscape below. But instead there is the repetitive glow of the traffic lights down Kottbusser Damm, the Rückenfigur is a cyclist, and the infinity a point above Hermannplatz.

Can one sense the metaphysical dimension suggested by the moon, its light spreading, dispersing, then growing more obscure as it’s hidden, in the skies above Kreuzberg? Perhaps the point is that these night skies make the foreground subject disappear completely. We find ourselves staring beyond, into this strange transition, waiting for the chill, moon, and mist, to give way to the sun.